Spirit in the Hadeshorn
by Stormer
Summary: A short story about one of the many spirits trapped within the Hadeshorn at the Valley of Shale. I thought about the moment someone calls on the spirits, from one of the lesser spirit’s points of view.


Disclaimer: Nope, I didn't write the _Shannara _series. That was all Terry Brooks, an awesome writer and one of my favourites! I love the series so much I wanted to make a little tribute to it – here is my first attempt. Thanks in advance for not suing (and to Elfy person for reminding me to disclaim *g* Darn it, I used to be so good at remembering on my own!).

Note: This was just an idea I had one day. I worked on it a while back, but only finished it tonight. It's not particularly polished. I'll do that later when I can be bothered.

The dankness of her eternity – she could not even remember her name by now – had become a part of who she was. She was no longer particularly aware of it. She had been taken from _that _life at a very young age, when less than a fifth of her life had been over. But this was her reality now, whether or not she was willing to accept it.

As time passed she grew more able to do that – accept what was. She had always thought it unfair the way she had been taken prematurely, dragged down into these immeasurable depths, in which she would serve a boundless number of years, perhaps centuries, in excruciating limbo. For a long time after she awoke to find herself in this nothing place, she had sustained herself on her grief, feeding on the loss she had suffered in order to maintain her bitterness, her incurable anger. Yet in the end it was all for nothing, because days, weeks, months, and years passed – though no such unit of time was calculable down here – and she gradually lost all sense of whom she had been.

In these times she merely existed in spirit form, hovering in place, waiting to be summoned, yet dreading it with every fibre of what remained of her.

The summonings were the worst experience she had ever known. Drawn up through the countless levels, up as the colour of the water around her changed colours iota-by-iota, lightening at a painfully slow pace. Finally the waters were murky, but she could see others around her, the spirits who were usually invisible presences in the dank depths. She saw their twisted countenances, their forms writhing in silent agony, and eventually she heard their voices, unlike human sounds, warped into a frequency that raked across one's consciousness.

She saw the light at the end of this tunnel, and knew she was nearly free. She sped upwards, following the calling, and as the light became blinding she broke the surface, gasped in the sulphurous air, screamed as loudly as her being would permit, screamed as part of a deafening cacophony; screamed into the summoner's awareness.

At that highest point when she was nearly free, she felt the weight tug on her, felt the shackles tighten. She hovered for a moment, baying for freedom, the freedom she'd desired for long centuries; then her howls altered, taking on an element of desperation, of fury, and finally of devastating grief.

She knew, in that moment, that she would _never_ be free, that the summoner had tricked her, made her hope for what she would never attain. She grew so stricken that she could no longer control her cries, and she saw the summoner, standing at the edge of the lake, huddling in on itself and covering its ears in an attempt to block her out. She couldn't stop.

She hung there for what seemed like an eternity as her voice joined those of all the other spirits in advising the summoner of the best course of action. She had no choice but to speak, for their voices were led by one booming voice, and she was but a slave, alongside the other spirits. Her very being ached with renewed loss, but she couldn't run and hide and curl in on her sadness; she could only hang there, suspended, trapped, so close yet so far from freedom.

Then it was over, and she could feel the vortex below her drawing on her again. She began to struggle as soon as she knew what was happening, struggle against the invisible and unbreakable bonds, struggle and cry and scream.

Slowly she was dragged down, back into the depths of afterlife's misery, back into her watery prison. Down she swept, finally too weak to fight the downward pull, and the waters grew darker and darker, until finally they were pitch black around her.

Deep in this cavernous space within the mountain, yet also on another plane entirely, the spirit huddled in a dark pocket of space, slowly and agonisingly consumed by her aggravated despair. Time passed at a snail's pace at first, but as it wore on things became quieter inside her. The equilibrium was restored and she returned to the former state in which she'd hovered, a state in which she had forgotten the summoner and lacked all recollection of the moment when freedom had seemed, to her, so within her grasp.

She endured somehow, and existed, the epitome of a tragic existence beyond the eyes of mortal kind.


End file.
